Lens
Gaffer × Vantage in one instrument: photograph Gaffer's path-traced studio through a real camera. Open the aperture and the picture brightens AS the depth of field collapses; pay for a small stop with a slower shutter or with ISO grain — the exposure triangle read against a live meter of the light your rig actually delivers. Plus everything Vantage teaches, on a lit set: sensor formats, the dolly-zoom subject lock, camera tilt vs lens shift for straight verticals with a draughtsman overlay, and a plan + section rig that shades the in-focus band around draggable lights. Client-side.
Three-point light meets an 85 mm portrait lens. Gaffer's classic three-point setup, photographed properly: 85 mm at f/2.8 puts the head sharp and lets the sweep fall soft. Open to f/1.4 and the photograph brightens a stop AND the in-focus slab collapses around the head — the aperture's two jobs at once. The meter reads the set; pay any move back with shutter or ISO.
One reading, three prices. Each f-stop, shutter halving or ISO doubling is exactly one stop of brightness — but the aperture also sets the depth of field, the shutter risks shake and motion (nothing moves in this studio, so here it's free), and ISO pays in grain. Pinhole traces a zero-size aperture (all sharp) while exposure still follows the ring — an honest A/B for the blur alone. Exposure 0.0 EV vs the f/4 · 1/60 · ISO 100 anchor.
Focus targets set the ring to that object's distance — walk it back through the set and watch the green band travel in the plan.
Whose eyes? What height? How close? — point of view is empathy. Perspective comes from where the camera STANDS; the focal length only crops. Drag the camera freely in plan and section too.
Tilt points the camera up — verticals converge (3-point). Shift keeps the camera level and slides the frame up the image circle — verticals stay parallel (2-point). The architectural-photography move, here with path-traced proof.
- KEY
- -2.2 EV
- -0.9 EV
The caption is burned onto a strip below the frame. Press Enter here, or take the frame from Export at the top of the page.
- Field of view
- 24° × 16° (29° diag)
- Equivalent focal
- 85 mm (1.00× crop)
- Depth of field
- 0.16 m
- Near / far limit
- 2.63 m / 2.78 m
- Hyperfocal
- 89.1 m
- Aperture diameter
- 30.4 mm
- Focus distance
- 2.70 m (auto)
- Subject distance
- 2.70 m
- Eye height
- 1.32 m
- Meter
- 0.0 EV mid
85 mm normal lens at f/2.8, 1/125 s, ISO 100 on full frame (36×24), 1.3 m eye height, focused at 2.70 m: a 24° view with razor-thin depth of field — 0.16 m is in focus (2.63–2.78 m); the sweep melts into bokeh; the meter sits at a mid exposure.
Honest to a point: thin-lens depth of field on the selected sensor's circle of confusion; the bokeh itself is path-traced from the real aperture and the real area lights. The meter is Gaffer's photometric estimate of DIRECT light at the ⌖ focus point (relative stops, not lux — bounce and background don't register, exactly like a real incident meter pointed at the key). Grain is stylised sensor noise; real lenses add aberrations, breathing and vignetting. The image starts grainy and clears as samples accumulate; moving anything restarts it.